Getting armor, weapon and valor upgrades via retraining

**Derfel von Saljeth** · 12-01-2006, 13:52

Originally Posted by Sinan

True. It was silly in MTW, Turcomen going around with plate armor.

Turcomen do get light mail upgrade though.

I love this new armor system. It's excellent and adds a nice and important detail.

I would like a real upgrade statwise. If you give padded armor to a nacked unit, i would like them to have same base armor of other padded armor protected unit . not just 1

**Slaists** · 12-01-2006, 17:09

If the idea that valor (even a couple points) help a lot in correct charges, at least for knights - the valor upgrades become crucial. You can have a 0-valor knight unit, not knowing what it's doing in the battlefield or +2 valor upgraded versions that charge much more consistently. I would go for the latter.

**Shahed** · 12-01-2006, 21:25

Originally Posted by Derfel von Saljeth

I would like a real upgrade statwise. If you give padded armor to a nacked unit, i would like them to have same base armor of other padded armor protected unit . not just 1

That would make sense for units that have 0 armor, to go to, for example 3 when they get padded armor. Thereafter +1 or so. I wonder if the game has levels for this or is it all +1 ?

**Derfel von Saljeth** · 12-01-2006, 21:36

Originally Posted by Sinan

That would make sense for units that have 0 armor, to go to, for example 3 when they get padded armor. Thereafter +1 or so. I wonder if the game has levels for this or is it all +1 ?

Well... they only have 3 armor but they wear a partial plate armor (they are militia pikemen with full armor upgrade)

I hope it will be moddable or implemented somehow

**Shahed** · 12-01-2006, 22:25

I wonder if TW will ever reach it's full potential. It seems the further thye go the more there is to add. Which is a good thing IMO, but just hope they don't run out of game concepts.

My idea on armor is a) each level, padded etc has a armor rating i.e 3-4-5 etc b) it changes the way the troops look on the field. Obviously the armor rating takes care of all the other statical survivability factors.

**Quillan** · 12-01-2006, 22:34

There seems to be a random bug with the upgrades for armor and experience of newly recruited units. As Spain, I can recruit almughavars with 1 experience if I have a big enough barracks at a castle. I recruit 3 of them. They come out with 0 exp. I retrain all 3. 2 of them now have 1 xp, one does not, but I was charged for all 3 upgrades. I retrain the 1 again. It still has no experience. I retrain the 1 a third time, and now finally it gets the 1 xp it was supposed to have at the start. I've ordered 3 units to retrain for armor upgrades when they were at full strength, and not gotten any, or only gotten 1 or 2 units with the upgrades. I can't depend on it working. However, retraining to restore the unit to full strength works perfectly.

**Shahed** · 12-02-2006, 01:33

Yeap, that's it. I've posted a link to this thread in the bug list. I'll eventually summarise the findings and repost in the bug list, but if anyone else wants to go ahead and do so, just please include my findings in it as well.

This is one that needs fixing (as do many other 'important' things) but as no one yet knows what causes the bug it may be hard to fix.

**dopp** · 12-02-2006, 02:10

Based on my observations, the armor values for the various levels runs as such:

Unarmored = 0 armor : Most militias, musketeers, Tercio Pikemen, arab units
Padded = 4 armor : Italian militia, Jinetes, other light cavalry
Light Mail/Splint = 5 armor : Mailed Knights, various swordsmen, Moorish miltia
Heavy Mail/Splint/Breastplates = 7 armor : Feudal Knights, SAPs, bodyguards
Partial Plate = 8 armor : Chivalric Knights
Full Plate = 9 armor : Late Bodyguards
Advanced Plate = 11 armor : Gendarmes, Gothic Knights

The most important jump is from unarmored to padded armor. It's a whopping 4 points. If you upgraded an unarmored unit to padded instead, it only gives 1 armor. Kind of lame really. There's also 2-point jumps from light mail to heavy and from full plate to advanced.

Say you take a unit of spear miltia and upgrade it 3 times to heavy mail. The graphic ingame shows them with shiny new helmets, steel breastplates/leggings and chainmail. But their armor reads as only 3. Take a unit that comes with padded armor when first recruited, like Italian spear militia. It starts off with 4 armor. Upgrade it 2 times to heavy mail as well. The same shiny helmets and armor. But they at least have a respectable 6 armor (it's still 1 less than they should be getting).

Some units are even more messed up. Tercio pikemen and musketeers/arquebusiers start of unarmored and their first upgrade level is not padded, it's light mail. So I upgrade them, expecting at least 2 armor, +1 for padded and +1 for mail. I only get 1 armor. With heavy mail and an identical appearance on the battlefield to fully upgraded pikemen, the elite Tercio pikemen have 2 armor compared to 3. I love using Tercio pikemen, but they take hideous casualties because their armor is so bad. I love using musketeers too, and if they had 5 armor like they are supposed to with the light mail upgrade then they could really press their advantage against enemy missile troops (their bullets would ignore enemy armor while their own modest armor protects them from return fire). As it is, however, unarmored troops (most city troops and advanced units) are unfairly gimped because the upgrade system doesn't take the huge jump from unarmored to padded into account, leaving a gap in armor protection between them and castle units (that mostly come with correct armor values) that they cannot close.

Please report this as a bug. I tried over at TWC but they are having problems with the site. A good temporary fix would be to simply give all unarmored units 3 armor to close the gap at the start, although it will not fix the light to heavy mail gap or the full to advanced plate gap.